Thread: flood damage or dog pee?

I inspected a 1970 built home. two story townhome. seller is original owner(elderly gentleman). The pictures you see are all on the first floor. All corner beads were destroyed by rust,most of the furniture had either rust or water wick damage, the floor registers all had rust stains running into them, and all the carpet nailing strips had rusted nails and were a dark brown water damamged color. There was one corner bead on the second floor that looked like this and nothing in the basement. I reported that a possible flood starting in the kitchen had flooded the whole 1st floor and further investigation would be needed to determine extent of damage and possible mold. I get a call from listing agent saying the home owner knew nothing of a flood and that all the water damage was caused by several dogs he owned peeing. Is all this water damage possible from pee? Also, with this much damage couldn't the possible pee cause mold and health problems anyway?

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Possibly the old man and the dogs have a urine problem.

rick

If the damage were caused by a flood, I would expect to see water damage to almost all surfaces below X".
I cannot say that all the damage was caused by dogs, but it does not look like a flood caused it.
Damage on the corners is at least 12", yet the walls show nothing.
Same thing goes for the table leg, only 3"-4".

so with the original carpets , woudlnt this still be some sort of health hazard even if its old? Especially if they were peeing in the duct work too.

I wouldn't buy the dog pee story. That much urine would cause a noticeable reek, BTW. Does the tall dog hit some corners and the short dog only on the table leg? Then why are they peeing in the ductwork, too?

There may be multiple roof leaks, flooding from bad plumbing and dogs peeing, but I would call for a more intensive investigation. Lab tests.
Bring in a Lab, if he sniffs the wall and raises his leg, ......

Is this house on a slab? It looks like the concrete or crawl space is saturated with water under the carpet. I have a hard time buying that much dog pee. It's really not that hard to train a dog to pee outside. A moisture check on the sub floor could shed some light.

im having a hard time believing dogs did all this too. Its a townhouse with a basement jim but this was on the first floor only. the listing agent said the home owner had 4 dogs and was barely ever home to take care of them. he also apparently used a wet vac alot to clean up their messes. Its so nasty if thats what all the damage was from because it was way worse than what u only see in the pics. It almost does make sense though since none of the drywall looked like it had wicked up any water or had signs of mold at all. theres no way he remediated the drywall and left the corner bead. if i find out anything ill let you all know.

Improper, overly wet carpet failure to extract excessive wetting from the carpets repeated episodes. Be it detergents, oxidizing agents, water (or urine), etc. wood sitting/resting on wet carpet wicks - including up table legs, from the gray ring around the table leg doesn't look like its (the table) been moved in a LONG time.

Hydrated or garden lime is often used to mask or "sweeten" and "sanitize" a dog "run" or kennel area. Appllied dry then watered in (copious amounts of water). That or a similar method might have been used if the stench of the place didn't knock you over.

40 year old regularly urine and if days on end went unattended presume fecal matter, soaked carpet, padding, tack strips, moulding, lower walls, etc. of the first floor "dog toilet" doesn't sound redeemable.

Roundworm eggs and other parasites often passed via day old (or longer) feces (which if owner was out for days at a time there would be feces not just urine) can be passed to humans. For the walls I'd stop at nothing less than removal of the entire effected areas up to the board seam line - usually at/about 45-48".

A "woods" lamp or a UV/black light and a spray can be a useful tool tracking down body fluids contamination.

If the seller is not telling the truth, then that is the worst excuse for water damage that I have ever heard.

If I was the seller I think I would have went along with the flood scenario, his defense was "there was no flood the dogs have been peeing on everything for 30 years" !!!

If I were the buyer, I could work with the, "had a water line bust, fixed the leak but never had any other repairs done", but I would probably walk away if I knew all that damage was from dog pee.

Wow, with a basement a flood on the upper floor would be pretty unlikely to spread out over much of an area on that floor. Four dogs left alone and never trained could cause some damage, but man that had to smell.

Originally Posted by chris mcintyre

If the seller is not telling the truth, then that is the worst excuse for water damage that I have ever heard.

If I was the seller I think I would have went along with the flood scenario, his defense was "there was no flood the dogs have been peeing on everything for 30 years" !!!

If I were the buyer, I could work with the, "had a water line bust, fixed the leak but never had any other repairs done", but I would probably walk away if I knew all that damage was from dog pee.

I would not want buy a house that had 4 dogs peeing everywhere. Do you think the buyers would want this place?